


Because he knows a frightful fiend doth behind him tread

by JeanjacketCarf



Category: iZombie (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst and Feels, Being a Zombie Sucks, Copious Horror Movie References, Episode: s01e12 Dead Rat Live Rat Brown Rat White Rat, Gen, Post Zombie Reveal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-28
Updated: 2019-08-28
Packaged: 2020-09-28 05:24:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,218
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20420633
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JeanjacketCarf/pseuds/JeanjacketCarf
Summary: "Peyton should have thought she was insane. She should have thought this was some kind of delusion that Liv was under. She should have not even believed her own eyes but she did. She believed Liv. She believed the dead man with a chef’s knife through his skull leaning against her kitchen island. She believed that Olivia Moore, her best friend, was a zombie. And she needed to do something about it."Or Peyton reacts a little differently to finding out Liv is a zombie





	Because he knows a frightful fiend doth behind him tread

**Author's Note:**

> Title comes from Coleridge's "Ancient Mariner" because I'm pretentious like that.
> 
> This is a redux of a fic I wrote in July 2015 after the end of the first season called "Staking the Loved One". It was only 800 words and started off with a substantial chunk of the above poem. I think it was on A03 but somehow it got deleted (possibly by me). I didn't like the fifth season of the show very much mostly because they forgot that being a zombie used to suck but watching it did remind me how good the first few seasons were and how much I loved it.
> 
> Anyways, please accept my humble contribution to the fandom.

In college, Liv and Peyton used to watch horror movies together. It was one of the things that first bonded them together as freshman year roommates. They were two ambitious type-A girls thrust together in a new environment, in a lot of stories they would have been at each other’s throats. But instead, they found they both broke a stereotype about girly-girls and gore.

On Saturday nights when their classmates were out getting drunk and the two of them were inside studying, they’d take a few hours to cool off and watch a Romero zombie movie. Liv always said they were the OG.

When Liv and Major started dating, he’d showed up one night with the box set of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and all three of them were instantly hooked. They watched all six seasons in a matter of weeks and every year or so would do a rewatch. Like Potluck Tuesdays and after-finals ragers, it kept them sane through four years of undergrad and three years post-grad. Eventually, Peyton could recite lines from half the episodes verbatim.

So she knew the lore down pat. Unlike in other stories, vampires were evil, they couldn’t be anything else. They weren’t really the people they had once been- their souls were gone. Instead, a demon soul took up residence in their bodies and absorbed their memories. The demons believed they were the person, and they were shaped by their personalities, but they lacked empathy and remorse and were motivated by a thirst for human blood.

Peyton had always wondered what in the real world that was supposed to relate to. Liv believed it represented giving up on your own agency and becoming an object in the universe. Major always said it was just silly genre stuff, it didn’t have to mean anything.

Peyton, in her English classes, wondered why all these stories- the ones about vampires, and zombies, and werewolves- were so afraid of people changing that they demanded the ones who loved them most had to put them down. Hell, there was a whole TV Tropes page dedicated to it. Staking the Loved One. She figured it had to be a metaphor for letting go. You can’t hold onto someone and keep them from drifting away from you, or getting that new job, or finding a new love, or even from death. But the metaphor didn’t work quite right. Because the protagonist’s never let their loved one go off into a new monstrous life, they killed them. That had always been difficult to understand. Peyton could never imagine hurting someone she loved.

Only now she wasn’t thinking about fiction. She had to wrestle with this question in real life. And she didn’t think she was up to the task.

_“There are zombies in this world, Peyton, and I’m one of them.”_

Peyton should have thought she was insane. She should have thought this was some kind of delusion that Liv was under. She should have not even believed her own eyes but she did. She believed Liv. She believed the dead man with a chef’s knife through his skull leaning against her kitchen island. She believed that Olivia Moore, her best friend, was a zombie. And that she, Peyton Charles, needed to do something about it.

Liv couldn’t sleep. Strictly speaking, she didn’t really need to these days but sometimes she was able to shut off, to slip away for a couple of hours, and then escape the soul-crushing exhaustion that had plagued her first few months as a zombie. Now, she couldn’t get her mind to quiet. It ran over and over the moment she turned around and Peyton was gone.

_“I’m going to get you some peroxide.”_ Had she really said that? Like Peyton was just going to watch Liv kill a man and confess that she ate brains and then let her clean the wound on her head? Hadn’t Sebastian just said that he ate his aunt after she cut her head open?

Liv knew she was safe. Knew absolutely without a doubt that when she said she would never hurt Peyton that it was true. But why would anyone else believe her?

Distantly, she heard something. Not the hum of the heat turning on or the creaking of the building settling. A soft click that echoed in the quiet. Probably just her neighbor coming home from the night shift. She told her heart to settle down. It had almost ticked up to 12 beats a minute.

An ambulance siren built up as it careened down the street, reached a peak as it passed below her window, then faded out. Fresh meat, she thought and rolled over dragging the pillow over her head. She wondered when she had stopped being disgusted with herself. 

The hinges of her bedroom door squeaked and she stiffened. The door opened slowly letting in a shaft of light from the uncovered windows in the living room. The smell of blood, the only smell that ever broke through her dulled senses, filled her lungs. Her mouth watered.

“Peyton.” The name sprung from her lips unbidden.

Something heavy and metallic fell to the floor.

Liv sat up and flicked on the bedside lamp. Peyton was standing in the doorway, dried blood still staining her temple. One of the kitchen knives was laying on the hardwood floor.

“Peyton,” Liv said again because she didn’t know what else to say. 

Peyton shook her head, eyes filling with tears as she covered her mouth and stumbled back into the wall.

Liv slipped out of bed and padded over, hands out and placating.

“Hey, hey. It’s okay.”

Peyton flinched away from her and she froze in her tracks. It was a moment when she really wished she could have been on someone else’s brain so she didn’t have to feel this so painfully.

She stepped back. “Okay, I understand. There’s no reason you should trust me. It’s scary but I’m telling you I’m still me so you don’t need to be afraid.”

Peyton blinked at her, a tear rolling down her cheek.

“God, you’re such an idiot. I came here to kill you, Liv.” She pointed to the knife on the ground. “I just- I can’t. I’m so sorry.”

Liv stared at the knife. The one she killed Sebastian with was still in an evidence locker back at the station but this was of a similar size and heft.

“Did you buy that?” She asked.

Peyton nodded and slid down the wall to sit on the floor, burying her face in her hands. Her shoulders shook with silent sobs.

“I’ve been wandering the city all night thinking about it. I thought I had to do something. That- that I had to… I don’t even know but it’s in all the movies. It’s just when you said my name you sounded the same. You sounded like you.”

Liv felt like the knife was twisting away at her heart. She tried to smile though.

“Like I was Lucy from Dracula? That’s a little corny, don’t you think?”

Peyton lurched forward and wrapped her arms around Liv’s legs, hugging her tightly.

“Don’t forgive me, okay?” She said to Liv’s knee. “Please, don’t forgive me.”

Liv ran her fingers through Peyton’s hair.

“Too late, dummy. You’re my freaking heart too.”


End file.
